What I do? well im a SEN, special education needs teacher in Middle School. I work side by side with our English teachers and ESL teachers trying to increase reading and writing skills in our students. Besides co-teaching 3 classes with the Middle School English Dept., I also teach two learning strategies/resource classes that help students with more severe needs get organized, build skills, and succeed in school. Í often view my self as a jack of all trades.
3 things about myself,
1. I love taking college courses, especially ones that are more theory/ed psych based.
2. Although I love traveling in the remote and mystical parts of Peru, my favorite country is Colombia, and I hope to live there and make it my home someday soon.
3. I read self/help and neo buddhist books, i figure if I put good things in they will come out.
Assignment 2#
Short reflection
well these have been interesting classes. Today I learned about MI and where it comes from- ABC- Always been there, Based in the Brain, and accepted in one or more cultures. From this information, I was interested to hear that MI actually corresponds to centers in the Brain. I would like to know more about the study, what instruments are used, and how the centers react. This reminds me in AVATAR when one of the scientists looks at the brain image, and is like..." wow nice brain....who would have knew."
So back to what we've been learning, I think this class will be an enjoyable and usefull class and I hope the information doesn't fall by the wayside. I know that many teachers are into routine and are hard to change. It seems that MI and differentiation needs good planning, gathering different materials, and order. However, after looking at our activities yesterday I learned that wherever your skill/interest level lies, or rather what we are good at, should be used to learn or enhance other skills. If I like actor and I'm very sociable maybe this can be used to increase my writing skills or my retetion on a history lesson. All very interesting stuff and I'm happy once again to be apart of this class.
This brings up another good insight, does using multiple intellegence and differentiation, help a student understand what he is good at? what direction should go in his life? does it reinforce nature that we have so sternly neglected? We have obvously had electives and arts in our classes but have we haven't gone further. We've educated in a box with this old system instead of allowing students to express them selvesmore naturally and aligned with their inate skills. What should our systems of Education look like? How do we promote differentation in our Classes?
Assingment 3# Joe Bonnici and Jefferson Shirk Explaining Metaphors with Explorama Cartoon
Assignment 4#
Jeff Shirk
LD
A disorder in basic psychological processes involved in understanding or using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell or use mathematical calculations. ...
These studetns often have average to above average intellegence; however, they are challenged in processing or speaking (learning) in specific areas- like writing, reading and math. They don't look different- their disabiltiy is hidden. they face low self esteem, academic problems, social problems, they often excel in one area. May take longer and more intensive stratgies (differentiation to learn) May cohorbit other problems with ADHD etc.
vary the length or quantity of the assignment.
extend or curtail the duration of the assignment.
change the language of the assignment.
scaffold the learning activity from hard to medium to easy.
compact the activity and teach only what they don't know.
Allow for Re-Do
check up on student
be sensitive of learning diff
positive encouragement
work with capable student
allow for MI & interests
Give extra
Assignment 5#
Describe an evolutionary reason why there might be an advantage to any of the special needs populations that we discussed in class.
I believe that evolution supports the notion that as a species we need to be different. If the environment is changing then we as a species need to change as well. However, will we all change at the same time? probably not, we would need nature/god to select who should evolve first. Then that individual would mate with another, hopefull selecting a mate that has some similiar charactersitics in which could produce similiar or more evolved offspring. So therefore, only a few may change at a time, then the whole race will eventually evolve or die off ( natural selection).
As in the case of Gifted and talented, it maybe a time where many more of these individuals are being produced. Why? well maybe it is because the world is more complicated now, we are more technical, the need for laborers is not as prevalent, the need for solutions that require creative solutions(wait sounds like our School MIssion) and people thinking outside the box but that have a good grasp of what is happening inside. Durring a time right now, where there is drastic overpopulation, drastic climate changes, advanced deseases and viruses, continued poverty and war. Maybe we need to change, evolution is geared toward continuing our species.
As for LD students, they could be used for different ocupations. Maybe some of the LD students need to work in jobs that support the society. We'can't have a millions of young boys dreaming to be Bill Gates can we? We need some that enjoy working with their hands, that enjoy astetics like art and design, we need some that have a spiritual inclination, I find that often LD students tend to more sensitive toward the needs of others and really enjoy animals. I sometimes think that maybe they are not all caught up in their head, something I find evident in westerners, and that they have more felling and sensitivity.
All in all, we are a community, we can't live without that. We need to interact with people, and if we don't we will find that nature selects us out. However, in a community do we need to be the same? does a community need all bankers and lawyers? no then there would be no artists, builders, designers, and tradesmen.
And where does creativity come from??? have we found a location in the brain? I don't think so? does it take a high IQ to be creative? or is creativity more of a feeling a connection to something in which your not trying, where your in Flow state. For instance, Im not an artist of the trained type;however, the other day I helped my friend whom is a graphic artist design an advertisement for a local sport magazine. I helped him with the scene added some suggestions and it really came out well. His team members where really impressed that I was able to add a new insight. However, I know nothing about graphic arts, I just had a feeling and naturally just added some suggestions.
So maybe some of these studetns with LD have creativity blarrring in their heads, needing to help create. Maybe they have less brain energy tinkering around with concrete things and they are more able to be in touch with the nature.
All in all, I think we are meant to be different, have different ocupations, and offer different perspectives to help balance out the race, to promote not eating the marshmellow all the time.
Tic Tac Toe- Jeff Shirk Assignment 6#
Draw an interesting scene and label the characters and the setting
Draw an interesting scene and explain and write a paragraph on what is happening in the story
In a small group, Act out a scene in the story but allow for your own interpretation dialogue to explain the scene better
In your favorite chapter find vocabulary words and give definitions
Find 10 difficult words in the story (unfamiliar) look up definitions and put in your own words the meaning
Write a formal letter to an important character in the story and give advice to help that person out
Write a letter to the Author explaining what you liked about the book
Create a poem that will explain a character feelings/and or problem in the story
Create a score- song that will explain a character’s conflict in the story
Assignment 7# Jeffrey Shirk EDU-604 12/18/2010
MI in the classroom using Pathway Guides Activity 1. Planning for MI in the Classroom (Understanding pathway organizer 7.2) Activity 2. Implementing Multiple Pathway in the Classroom
This is an exploration of learning on using the pathway guides consisting of entry points and exit points outlined in Multiple Intelligence in the Elementary Classroom by Susan Baum. In Chapter 7, Baum explains that pathways focus on promoting students understanding of topics and concepts through differentiating instruction based on MI theory. Therefore my co-teacher and I sat down before embarking on a new lesson keeping in mind how we can promote the learning of our unit, short story writing, for our students that are not linguistically inclined? In other words, how could we increase the understanding of our students that struggle with written expression? The following is how we planned our lesson using understanding pathway and implemented activities using multiple intelligence theory. Student population- 22, 7th grade students Age- 12-13 Class- MYP English/ Co taught with Special Education Teacher Activity 1. Using understanding pathway organizer Topic of Unit- Character development for Short Story writing What should students know? They should know how to describe a character in detail using and descriptive language What big ideas are central to their topic? Characterization, revealing their character in a short story What should students be able to do as a result of this topic of study? Students should be able to describe their character explicitly and indirectly in their short stories that builds interest in their audience. Develop and Plan Learning experiences that will address the learning goals using Gardner’s entry points. Doorways/resources- we felt that to promote characterization we could use- Acting, Construction, Artistic creation, and linguistic/written expression. Intelligences- As Baum suggests, activities should highlight several intelligences at one time. We felt the above activities represented, spatial, linguistic, intrapersonal, and bodily kinesthetic. After brainstorming our lesson using Baum understanding pathway guide, we wanted to create bridging point that would capture the attention of our students and help model one of their choices. So, I had mentioned to my co-teaching partner about my recent graduate class that discussed visual/spatial learners highlighting that a picture is worth a thousand words. My partner agreed. So I said to my co-teaching partner, why don’t we show a visual of a character then create a graphic organizer together as a class that would describe the character in detail. We decided this would be a good bridging point and modeling procedure for the lesson and one of our entry points for the students to choose from. My partner found a picture from the 1920’s of a man in black suit on a city block with a grimace look on his face. We asked the students to brainstorm for a minute then share with us their impressions of the character. One student said he looks like a bank robber, I wrote that down, another said he looks serious, another said he looks frightening and intense and so on… After brainstorming the character together we realized that photos can represent a thousand words and that as a class we came up with good descriptive words we could use in a story. After modeling this we handed out our entry points for their assignment. We decided to allow our students to choose from four assignments that would be shared with their class by the end of the double block period. Choices/assignments 1. Construction – (MI -spatial/logical mathematical) using legos to construct your character and write 10 descriptive words describing your character. 2. Poem- ( MI- Linguistic) write a poem that describes your character, the poem reveals his feelings, appearances. 3. Artistic-( Spatial/kinesthetic) with the materials in class, artistically construct your character, this can be a three dimensional character or a drawing, after write 10 descriptive words of your character 4. Actor- Develop a monologue that you will perform to the class. No more than 5 minutes. This can be a scene in your story that reveals your character or a mime. (Choose mime-write 10 descriptive words.)
Class observation: Students broke out into groups to develop their tasks. The artistic people went to the materials area, the Actors, were given a separate space, the construction had their area, and the poem group were free to find their own space. Students began working, many had an exciting look on their faces, and it was interesting to see students with LD problems get right to work. All the LD students went to either the construction or the artistic representation; none went to the monologue or the poem. It seemed the more aggressive students, or outspoken ones that often were high achievers decided to do the poem or the acting monologue piece. The construction area had more boys than girls. We gave the students 50 minutes to complete their assignments as we walked around and assisted. I often told students, that there is no right answer jus to describe what they feel. At the end of class we shared our results. Many students were happy to share, some students noticed how others activities were portrayed and asked these students to share. The activities went well; many of the lower performing students designed some very creative artistic pieces, with enriched vocabulary attached. For the construction theme, on student had designed a robot with wings that he said was the protector of the last city left on earth, he also came up with some great descriptive words. A few students chose to mime their monologues in which the class laughed and enjoyed the experience, and a few poems were rich in description as we expected. The most important thing is that students looked active; they were engaged in the process of learning and excited. It was an excellent unit, on one that really opened our eyes. Access students’ developing understandings and identify misconceptions using exit point or assessment activities. Did the activities in the unit allow for my students to apply their understandings in new situation? Yes students were able to apply their activities to writing a short story which is new to them. These activities helped build their knowledge in a through their skilled area that will later be applied to their story writing. Are the products appropriate? Yes I think the products were appropriate because each had a written component in which reinforces our learning goals of developing descriptive language. Change needed? Have more materials for students, allow musical piece, do more modeling on the other activities- poem. Do this activity again?- yes I would definitely do this activity again. Learning was accelerated.
Jeff Shirk / Professional Student
Assignment 1#
What I do? well im a SEN, special education needs teacher in Middle School. I work side by side with our English teachers and ESL teachers trying to increase reading and writing skills in our students. Besides co-teaching 3 classes with the Middle School English Dept., I also teach two learning strategies/resource classes that help students with more severe needs get organized, build skills, and succeed in school. Í often view my self as a jack of all trades.
3 things about myself,
1. I love taking college courses, especially ones that are more theory/ed psych based.
2. Although I love traveling in the remote and mystical parts of Peru, my favorite country is Colombia, and I hope to live there and make it my home someday soon.
3. I read self/help and neo buddhist books, i figure if I put good things in they will come out.
Assignment 2#
Short reflection
well these have been interesting classes. Today I learned about MI and where it comes from- ABC- Always been there, Based in the Brain, and accepted in one or more cultures. From this information, I was interested to hear that MI actually corresponds to centers in the Brain. I would like to know more about the study, what instruments are used, and how the centers react. This reminds me in AVATAR when one of the scientists looks at the brain image, and is like..." wow nice brain....who would have knew."
So back to what we've been learning, I think this class will be an enjoyable and usefull class and I hope the information doesn't fall by the wayside. I know that many teachers are into routine and are hard to change. It seems that MI and differentiation needs good planning, gathering different materials, and order. However, after looking at our activities yesterday I learned that wherever your skill/interest level lies, or rather what we are good at, should be used to learn or enhance other skills. If I like actor and I'm very sociable maybe this can be used to increase my writing skills or my retetion on a history lesson. All very interesting stuff and I'm happy once again to be apart of this class.
This brings up another good insight, does using multiple intellegence and differentiation, help a student understand what he is good at? what direction should go in his life? does it reinforce nature that we have so sternly neglected? We have obvously had electives and arts in our classes but have we haven't gone further. We've educated in a box with this old system instead of allowing students to express them selvesmore naturally and aligned with their inate skills. What should our systems of Education look like? How do we promote differentation in our Classes?
Assingment 3# Joe Bonnici and Jefferson Shirk Explaining Metaphors with Explorama Cartoon
Assignment 4#
Assignment 5#
Describe an evolutionary reason why there might be an advantage to any of the special needs populations that we discussed in class.
Gifted/talented, LD, Economically disadvantaged, Asperger Spectrum, ESL
I believe that evolution supports the notion that as a species we need to be different. If the environment is changing then we as a species need to change as well. However, will we all change at the same time? probably not, we would need nature/god to select who should evolve first. Then that individual would mate with another, hopefull selecting a mate that has some similiar charactersitics in which could produce similiar or more evolved offspring. So therefore, only a few may change at a time, then the whole race will eventually evolve or die off ( natural selection).
As in the case of Gifted and talented, it maybe a time where many more of these individuals are being produced. Why? well maybe it is because the world is more complicated now, we are more technical, the need for laborers is not as prevalent, the need for solutions that require creative solutions(wait sounds like our School MIssion) and people thinking outside the box but that have a good grasp of what is happening inside. Durring a time right now, where there is drastic overpopulation, drastic climate changes, advanced deseases and viruses, continued poverty and war. Maybe we need to change, evolution is geared toward continuing our species.
As for LD students, they could be used for different ocupations. Maybe some of the LD students need to work in jobs that support the society. We'can't have a millions of young boys dreaming to be Bill Gates can we? We need some that enjoy working with their hands, that enjoy astetics like art and design, we need some that have a spiritual inclination, I find that often LD students tend to more sensitive toward the needs of others and really enjoy animals. I sometimes think that maybe they are not all caught up in their head, something I find evident in westerners, and that they have more felling and sensitivity.
All in all, we are a community, we can't live without that. We need to interact with people, and if we don't we will find that nature selects us out. However, in a community do we need to be the same? does a community need all bankers and lawyers? no then there would be no artists, builders, designers, and tradesmen.
And where does creativity come from??? have we found a location in the brain? I don't think so? does it take a high IQ to be creative? or is creativity more of a feeling a connection to something in which your not trying, where your in Flow state. For instance, Im not an artist of the trained type;however, the other day I helped my friend whom is a graphic artist design an advertisement for a local sport magazine. I helped him with the scene added some suggestions and it really came out well. His team members where really impressed that I was able to add a new insight. However, I know nothing about graphic arts, I just had a feeling and naturally just added some suggestions.
So maybe some of these studetns with LD have creativity blarrring in their heads, needing to help create. Maybe they have less brain energy tinkering around with concrete things and they are more able to be in touch with the nature.
All in all, I think we are meant to be different, have different ocupations, and offer different perspectives to help balance out the race, to promote not eating the marshmellow all the time.
Tic Tac Toe- Jeff Shirk
Assignment 6#
Assignment 7#
Jeffrey Shirk
EDU-604
12/18/2010
MI in the classroom using Pathway Guides
Activity 1. Planning for MI in the Classroom (Understanding pathway organizer 7.2)
Activity 2. Implementing Multiple Pathway in the Classroom
This is an exploration of learning on using the pathway guides consisting of entry points and exit points outlined in Multiple Intelligence in the Elementary Classroom by Susan Baum. In Chapter 7, Baum explains that pathways focus on promoting students understanding of topics and concepts through differentiating instruction based on MI theory. Therefore my co-teacher and I sat down before embarking on a new lesson keeping in mind how we can promote the learning of our unit, short story writing, for our students that are not linguistically inclined? In other words, how could we increase the understanding of our students that struggle with written expression? The following is how we planned our lesson using understanding pathway and implemented activities using multiple intelligence theory.
Student population- 22, 7th grade students
Age- 12-13
Class- MYP English/ Co taught with Special Education Teacher
Activity 1. Using understanding pathway organizer
Topic of Unit- Character development for Short Story writing
What should students know? They should know how to describe a character in detail using and descriptive language
What big ideas are central to their topic? Characterization, revealing their character in a short story
What should students be able to do as a result of this topic of study? Students should be able to describe their character explicitly and indirectly in their short stories that builds interest in their audience.
Develop and Plan Learning experiences that will address the learning goals using Gardner’s entry points.
Doorways/resources- we felt that to promote characterization we could use- Acting, Construction, Artistic creation, and linguistic/written expression.
Intelligences- As Baum suggests, activities should highlight several intelligences at one time.
We felt the above activities represented, spatial, linguistic, intrapersonal, and bodily kinesthetic.
After brainstorming our lesson using Baum understanding pathway guide, we wanted to create bridging point that would capture the attention of our students and help model one of their choices. So, I had mentioned to my co-teaching partner about my recent graduate class that discussed visual/spatial learners highlighting that a picture is worth a thousand words. My partner agreed. So I said to my co-teaching partner, why don’t we show a visual of a character then create a graphic organizer together as a class that would describe the character in detail. We decided this would be a good bridging point and modeling procedure for the lesson and one of our entry points for the students to choose from. My partner found a picture from the 1920’s of a man in black suit on a city block with a grimace look on his face. We asked the students to brainstorm for a minute then share with us their impressions of the character. One student said he looks like a bank robber, I wrote that down, another said he looks serious, another said he looks frightening and intense and so on… After brainstorming the character together we realized that photos can represent a thousand words and that as a class we came up with good descriptive words we could use in a story.
After modeling this we handed out our entry points for their assignment.
We decided to allow our students to choose from four assignments that would be shared with their class by the end of the double block period.
Choices/assignments
1. Construction – (MI -spatial/logical mathematical) using legos to construct your character and write 10 descriptive words describing your character.
2. Poem- ( MI- Linguistic) write a poem that describes your character, the poem reveals his feelings, appearances.
3. Artistic-( Spatial/kinesthetic) with the materials in class, artistically construct your character, this can be a three dimensional character or a drawing, after write 10 descriptive words of your character
4. Actor- Develop a monologue that you will perform to the class. No more than 5 minutes. This can be a scene in your story that reveals your character or a mime. (Choose mime-write 10 descriptive words.)
Class observation: Students broke out into groups to develop their tasks. The artistic people went to the materials area, the Actors, were given a separate space, the construction had their area, and the poem group were free to find their own space.
Students began working, many had an exciting look on their faces, and it was interesting to see students with LD problems get right to work. All the LD students went to either the construction or the artistic representation; none went to the monologue or the poem. It seemed the more aggressive students, or outspoken ones that often were high achievers decided to do the poem or the acting monologue piece. The construction area had more boys than girls. We gave the students 50 minutes to complete their assignments as we walked around and assisted. I often told students, that there is no right answer jus to describe what they feel.
At the end of class we shared our results. Many students were happy to share, some students noticed how others activities were portrayed and asked these students to share. The activities went well; many of the lower performing students designed some very creative artistic pieces, with enriched vocabulary attached. For the construction theme, on student had designed a robot with wings that he said was the protector of the last city left on earth, he also came up with some great descriptive words. A few students chose to mime their monologues in which the class laughed and enjoyed the experience, and a few poems were rich in description as we expected. The most important thing is that students looked active; they were engaged in the process of learning and excited. It was an excellent unit, on one that really opened our eyes.
Access students’ developing understandings and identify misconceptions using exit point or assessment activities.
Did the activities in the unit allow for my students to apply their understandings in new situation?
Yes students were able to apply their activities to writing a short story which is new to them. These activities helped build their knowledge in a through their skilled area that will later be applied to their story writing.
Are the products appropriate? Yes I think the products were appropriate because each had a written component in which reinforces our learning goals of developing descriptive language.
Change needed? Have more materials for students, allow musical piece, do more modeling on the other activities- poem.
Do this activity again?- yes I would definitely do this activity again. Learning was accelerated.